Does this picture work?

I shot this yesterday, having tried to capture glasseye sweepers in the past with little success. In camera, this photo looked like a winner, but now i'm not sure if its just too cluttered with no real solid subject to focus on. Shown larger i think it works better, but small i have a hard time seeing the detail in the little fish. Can I get some honest straight-up opinions if this photo works on a professional level.

thoughts?

and i'll throw in another photo:

does the fact that we speared & ate it after detract from the photo - as most people know, lionfish are an invasive and ecologically damaging force in the atlantic. we have a govt sanctioned culling program allowing divers to obtain a license & spear them, hopefully avoiding the mess they've created in parts of the Caribbean. its scary to see how these things can just obliterate every small fish on a patch of reef in a short time - and it tasted gooooood.

Interests:Protecting our Ocean, Environmental Education,
Having fun and Living Well

Posted 17 May 2010 - 04:44 PM

Hi Chris,
I really like the sweeper image. You might try to seperate them just a tad more by bringing the overall exposure up then bringing up the blacks (if you're in Lightroom or ACR). Lots of ways to do it, I'd think about what it would feel like with a little tighter crop too. The blues look like cr#p since I'm playing with the jpeg but you hopefully you can see what I'm thinking.

I think which makes this image not a winner is that most of the blue is positioned to the bottom of the image. I think it would have been more pleasing if the structure was opening up more towards the top. I do think the crop Steve did helped a lot in trimming down the overwhelming negative space.

Obviously we can go around and change the natural structures:) So I do think in this scenario, if the fish was more closely grouped together in the bottom blue space it would have made a big difference. At present the small blue space at the top left is what draws my eye the strongest and then tends to stick there.

On the lion fish, it’s so “weird” for me to think that these are actually a problem in some location and secondly that one can eat them. They just look so inedible and pretty;)

I shot this yesterday, having tried to capture glasseye sweepers in the past with little success. In camera, this photo looked like a winner, but now i'm not sure if its just too cluttered with no real solid subject to focus on. Shown larger i think it works better, but small i have a hard time seeing the detail in the little fish. Can I get some honest straight-up opinions if this photo works on a professional level.

South Western Breaker? I dove there the day before but my shots were not nearly successful as yours.

does the fact that we speared & ate it after detract from the photo - as most people know, lionfish are an invasive and ecologically damaging force in the atlantic. we have a govt sanctioned culling program allowing divers to obtain a license & spear them, hopefully avoiding the mess they've created in parts of the Caribbean. its scary to see how these things can just obliterate every small fish on a patch of reef in a short time - and it tasted gooooood.

Agree. Yummy. There were 6 of them on Xing Da wreck last week in just one spot. Well, I took plenty of pictures and then we got three of them on spears. Sounds cruel and does not look pretty on pictures. But I do have a license to kill lion fish and yes, they are tasty. Nice shot!

South Western Breaker? I dove there the day before but my shots were not nearly successful as yours.

Agree. Yummy. There were 6 of them on Xing Da wreck last week in just one spot. Well, I took plenty of pictures and then we got three of them on spears. Sounds cruel and does not look pretty on pictures. But I do have a license to kill lion fish and yes, they are tasty. Nice shot!

Hey mate,

it was at the Cathedral in the east end, just off Nonsuch. The tunnel there is about 4 or 5 times the size of the SW Breaker swimthrough, but that's still one of my fav sites.

i've never seen that many lionfish on one site, good to know you got 3. Is there a mooring on the Xing Da still? I didn't think there was, usually gets torn out by the winter storms and the dive boats don't really go there anymore. cheers,

i've never seen that many lionfish on one site, good to know you got 3. Is there a mooring on the Xing Da still? I didn't think there was, usually gets torn out by the winter storms and the dive boats don't really go there anymore. cheers,

chris

Yes, the mooring is still there. BSAC guys went there just last weekend. And they got 3 more lionfish.